Bookish Thoughts / General Books

Let’s Talk Bookish: Putting Off the Books I want to Read!

Dini @ dinipandareads34 Comments

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme, hosted by Rukky @Eternity Books  & Dani @ Literary Lion, where we get to discuss certain topics, share our opinions, and spread the love by visiting each other’s posts! You can check out these pages for more information on April 2021 prompts & a list of all past prompts!

Now without further ado… The topic asks:

PUTTING OFF BOOKS YOU ACTUALLY WANT TO READ

(SUGGESTED BY JILLIAN @ THE BOOKISH BUTTERFLY)
Examples: Do you ever put off the books you actually want to be reading? What do you end up reading instead? Why do you put off the books that you would rather read for other stories? Do you treat reading books you’re excited as a reward?

PUTTING OFF BOOKS I WANT TO READ

Hi, hellow. Do I ever put off books I want to be reading? Yes. Yes, I do. This is me 99% of the time. 😂 I feel like ever since joining the book community this has become an increasingly bad habit which has also resulted in both my physical and digital shelves to grow totally out of control. The rate at which I populate my shelves with books that I want to read ASAP vs the rate I actually read said books is… Very unbalanced! 🙈 But surely, I’m not the only one that does this, right?!

Also, I’m well aware that I’m speaking from a place of privilege here—especially as someone who doesn’t have access to libraries and has to purchase all of the aforementioned books!

BUT WHY?

Honestly, it’s not as if I pick up books I don’t want to read—I do want to read them, I just usually want to read the books I put off slightly more (I swear, we’re gonna make this make sense). There are definitely reasons for why I do this.

  1. I’m a big mood reader. Even if I have a book in hand that I know I’ve been dying to get to, if the mood to pick it up has passed I’d rather put it off rather than read it when I’m in the “wrong” mood and risk not enjoying it as much as I know I would otherwise. I’ve done this a few times and it just made me sad. 🥲
  2. Sometimes the hype kind of puts me off. I know that doesn’t make sense because hype usually makes you want to pick up a book more thanks to FOMO and all of that, right? While that’s usually true, I’ve noticed that I tend to read most hyped books much later compared to everyone else. It’s not like I forget about the hype, and this is probably all in my head, but I feel like I can push aside the hype and read it without those expectations later on rather than if I read it while everyone else was reading it too.
  3. This also links to my worries about not liking a highly anticipated book which makes it so easy for me to put off reading it. I can name a million books from the last year alone that I was super excited for and may have even pre-ordered, but I still have yet to read them—one. year. later!
  4. Other commitments like blog tours and ARCs have also made it easier to put off the books I want to be reading. This tends to happen a lot when I know I’m ‘chasing a deadline’ but the mood suddenly strikes to read one of those ‘sad on the shelf books that’ve been there forever’ and yet, I can’t because I’m bad at time management and deadlines loom ever closer. 😂

DO I TREAT READING BOOKS I’M EXCITED FOR AS A REWARD?

I’ve tried to do this a few times and though it worked sometimes, as a mood reader, my moods tend to change quite quickly especially when I’m feeling restless and so this often doesn’t work. I think it’s a good idea though because then at least you’d have more motivation to get your shit done ✔ so that you can move on to reading what you want!

It’s been a hot minute since I did a LTB post but it felt good to answer this prompt today, and I thought it was a really fun one to answer
Do you put off books you want to be reading? Why do you do it?

34 thoughts on “Let’s Talk Bookish: Putting Off the Books I want to Read!”

  1. I put off books I bought because of hype as well. Not to mention all the other backlist books I set aside for whatever reason. The last couple of years it had been because of graduate school. I was too mentally drained and I did not want to be distracted from schoolwork otherwise. Last year, though, it was never “the right moment” for certain books. Now, I have a bunch left on my physical TBR pile. Which is fine by me. More books to read!

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    • I totally feel that about school being a drainer! I was an avid reader in HS but the minuted I started uni I stopped completely until the tail end when I had more ‘breathing room’. Yay for all the books—never anything wrong with having more books to read 😉

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      • It’s so interesting to me to hear people say that. I read more in college than I did in the years since I graduated. Maybe because I was an English major? But reading was also my biggest form of self-care, so I practiced it whenever I had the chance.

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  2. I 100% understand all of those reasons!!! I ADORE the Red Rising saga, but I’ve had the last book that was released at home for almost 2 years now and I can’t bring myself to read it. For one, the hype was big and I’m scared and I’m also a big mood reader and that mood hasn’t struck me yet. However, ON TOP OF THAT, the book is just massive. Like, it’s physically intimidating me with its size. I feel like it will take me a year to read.

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    • YEEES. ALL OF THIS! LOL I have *so* many unfinished series and a lot of the time I put it off cos everyone was hyping up the books so much and I was terrified I’d hate it 😂 I can imagine about the Red Rising saga books though—all of them are chonksters, aren’t they? LOL the chonky ones always put me off even more! I hope you do enjoy it whenever the mood strikes you to pick it up though 😉

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  5. This is a very interesting phenomenon! For me it is usually things like blog tours, and the sheer volume of books I want to read. There are some books on my TBR which I look at and think it’s unforgivable that I haven’t read it yet 😅

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    • Since I started doing a lot more blog tours last year, it’s probably been the sole reason (other than my fickle moods) that I’ve put off reading the books I want! I get so frustrated at myself for doing this sometimes 🤣 I look at some of the books on my TBR and want to run in shame seeing them *still* on there after… *clears throat* Years? 🙈

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  6. Yep.. this is so me! All of those things happen but mostly.. I’m such a mood reader. It changes my reading up all the time. It’s frustrating at times but it is what it is. lol!

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  7. I love this! The more a book is hyped, the longer it will take me to read it. And I seem to have a record of not liking the books that everyone is raving about, so if a book is hyped, I totally agree with the fear of not liking it. Totally agree with all of this!

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    • Glad to hear I’m not the only one that puts off hyped books! I mean, part of me really does want to read it cos I want to be in on the current convos but also, yikes if I don’t like it—then I’ll just be sad 😂

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  8. I DO THIS TOO!😅😂 For similar reasons! It is so easy to put off books you were excited for, I can stick to a tbr but I’m a mood reader a lot of the time too and it makes it so easy to avoid anticipated reads! Hyped books always make me scared because I hate the disappointment when it doesn’t live up to the hype 😅 Great post, Dini! 🐼💜

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    • It’s kinda crazy isn’t it? I mean, there are some books that I was super duper looking forward to and constantly talking about prior to their release late year—even going so far as to pre-order some of these books—and so many of them are *still* sitting on my TBR. What is wrong with me!? 🤣 It’s also the worst when a book really doesn’t live up to the hype 🙈

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  11. I can so relate to your #3! I have tons of books on my shelves that I want to read, but keep hesitating about picking them up because I’m scared I won’t like them as much as I want to.

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  12. I definitely put off reading books I’d been excited about, mostly because I’m a big mood reader, like you. During the last few months of 2020, a couple of series – three, I think – ended that I absolutely adored. At that point, I’d been waiting for these conclusions for about a year, so I of course ordered all of them and expected to read them right after their publication. But then I wasn’t in the mood for sequels, much less fantasy sequels, so I put them off – I read the first of these three last month so uh, you can clearly see that I’ve been putting them off. Great discussion! 🙂

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    • Haha, omg this is exactly me. I’ve done this often that my list of unfinished series is stupidly long now 🙈 And then of course, since it’s been so long sine I read the previous books, I feel the need to at least re-read the previous (or previous two if it’s a long series) books before reading the final, and that obviously means I put it off for longer again 😂 But at least you already got to one of the series! Just two more to go 😉 Haha

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  13. I do this too for all of the reasons you mentioned and also sometimes because if it’s one I’ve been waiting to read for a long time, then I don’t want it to be over so I leave it sitting on the shelf (if that even makes sense, haha!).

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